


A Touch of Frost

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Series: The MCU Dæmon AU [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:56:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki and Eisa feel far too at home in Jotunheim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Touch of Frost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thejerseydevile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejerseydevile/gifts).



They arrive in Jötunheim to a quiet and a chill that has the rest huddling back against their Others to keep the warmth in their skin. For Eisa though, the frigid air is perfectly fresh as she breathes it in, and she slips from the ferret shape at Loki’s neck to a wide pawed winter dog with a strange feeling of reluctance that she can’t find a reason for.

Eisa pads through the snow ahead of the rest, itching with the urge to run, as if each breath draws pure energy into her lungs and her blood. She has to stop more than once when she gets too far ahead, even Hogun’s nimble Hildr unable to keep up, and when she turns back she sees that same fervent vitality in Loki as well, in the sharp movement of his blazing eyes, the frantic shift of his fingers. Thor’s thirst for battle must be infectious, she thinks, though the scowling shape of Tanngrisnir, fighting through the snow where Eisa fairly dances through it, suggests otherwise. Hot spirits cool quickly in a Jötunheim wind.

“Get back,” Gylltoskr hisses at her, labouring through the deeper snow after her rather than risking his trotters on the slick ice. She drops back to him, sets her shoulder against his in a darker version of his shape- though the itch of tight, suffocating skin that usually pushes her to shift is missing- and helps him force his way through the drift he’s caught in. In the next moment though, she’s dancing ahead again as a snowshoe hare, unable to contain herself as she revels in the overflow of energy she’s so used to not having.

Tanngrisnir gets jealous- she always does one way or another- and surges ahead of Eisa when even quiet Hildr’s request cannot call her back, and Eisa lets her sister herd her back towards their Others because even she is concerned with how bright, how _real_ she feels. She’s a squirrel, a miniature Ratatoskr, running up Loki’s sleeve, and she huddles against his neck, tiny claws locked into his collar as she itches to run again.

“Are you well?” Loki asks her, breathing sharp and quick, a frantic look in his eyes. It comforts her to know they feel it just the same, even if it must disturb Loki as it did her, or he would not be asking.

“Well enough,” she replies, watching Thor and Tanngrisnir storm ahead. For all that the wind is howling around them, driving up flurries of snow, the landscape is far too still around them. They are being watched, that is a certainty.

It doesn’t take the hardheaded pair to stumble straight into trouble, and as the circle of jötnar closes around them, with none other than King Laufey looking down at them from his tumbled throne, even Eisa’s frenzied energy is tamped down. She shifts, slow enough to avoid catching anyone’s eye, until she fills the space on Loki’s shoulder as a needle pawed cat, sleek as a shadow.

It seems that the jötnar, despite their numbers, stand as alone as their children’s stories had suggested, and the Asgardian dæmons shift uneasily at the sight of such halved and lonely creatures. The ice at their feet shifts and shimmers though, and suddenly the shapes of dæmons become apparent to Eisa’s sharper eyes, all painted in such colours that they blend perfectly with the ice around them. They are sharp edged to a fault, though some are prickly and pointed as frost while others are honed icicle blades. The biggest she spots lurks in the shadow of Laufey’s throne, easily mistakable as a jutting edge of the cliff until it shifts and catches her gaze with a baleful red eye.

She realises then, as Loki coaxes Thor back from inciting war, and plies Laufey with silver words, that she has mistaken them entirely. The jötnar dæmons didn’t shape themselves like ice. They were ice.

They swiftly lose control of the situation, and Eisa leaps down to Tanngrisnir’s back, claws sunk into his thick hair, as he throws himself into the fray behind Thor.

“Their dæmons are ice!” she hisses at him. “Be careful!”

As if summoned, a jötunn dæmon rears up in front of them, a stocky, hard lined beast that seema carved straight out of the cliff. Tanngrisnir puts it down with a sharp blow from his horns, and Eisa takes the opportunity to drop down from his back and dart through the chaos to Loki. She shouts her warning to Gylltoskr and Prýði as she passes, but she doubts they would listen even if they heard her. Hildr is careful enough without her caution.

She’s at Loki’s feet in the next second, snapping and hissing at the dæmons that get too near. Volstagg and Frosseri yell in pain a moment later, loud enough to be heard over the battle, and they reiterate the warning: Asgardian skin burns to the ice’s touch. 

They are careful, but their tendency to close combat is their undoing. Eisa faces down a strange vulpine creature furred entirely in frost as Loki strikes its Other down, but her needled paw is caught between the ice fox’s teeth, Loki’s arm in the jötunn’s grip, and the world falls apart under the creeping spread of blue.

She’s still black, Eisa idly realises as the startled dæmon lets her go, and the next moment vanishes in a flash of silver Dust as Loki finishes off the jötunn that caught him. She doesn’t dare look at Loki, can’t turn away from her black ice paws as they slowly melt back into fur. Her warm shape feels smothering now, after that brief taste of sheer cold, and that frightens her so much that she’s clawing for Loki’s arm as he reaches to scoop her up, scrabbling to get closer to him as he crushes her against his chest, until the only reason she can’t breathe is his hold on her.

“I’m cold, I’m warm,” she whispers to herself miserably, not knowing which is worse, as Loki carves a path through the jötnar with throwing knives alone, one arm still wrapped around her. She shivers in the wind and can’t be sure why, bites into the leather of Loki’s armour to keep from screaming, from crying until she washes away. Dæmons can’t cry, but she’s never wanted to more in her life, because she needs to know how to be water again, because she’s been ice, and it felt like coming home, and that’s so, so wrong-

Fandral and Prýði are struck down, and they drag them up and flee for their lives, chased by a monster that might have been a dæmon. It proves false as Thor puts the creature down without a hint of Dust, but it’s for naught as the jötnar close around them again.

“Don’t touch me!” Eisa hisses frantically, terrified like she’s never been until this moment. They’re standing on a knife edge, she and Loki, and starting to slip, with no one to catch them.

The AllFather comes crashing down on the ice to save them, dark winged Gangleri looming at his shoulder, and Eisa’s never been so grateful for his anger. She shakes against Loki, and feels his fingers tremble where they’re tangled in her fur, then they’re swallowed up by the Bifrost, and there is nothing but light.

It doesn’t last.


End file.
